Rusty Lake Theories Wiki
Welcome to the Rusty Lake Theories Wiki This wikipage is made to register every plausible theories about the Rusty Lake / Cube Escape series of escape games. Feel free to add any theories you want, as long as they make some sort of sense in the context of the whole series. Known story of Rusty Lake (so far) Here is a graph of every interactions of every characters in the series. To see a clear version of the image, right clic it and open it in a new tab. Rusty Lake: Paradise In 1796 a young man named Jakob Eilander returns to his family home on an island called Paradise. This is at the behest of his father, Nicolas, who says the lake has been suffering after the death of Jakob's mother, Caroline. The island undergoes the ten plagues of Egypt, and from a player's perspective it seems Jakob is the driving force causing them to run their course. He even goes as far as to allow himself to be sacrificed as the first born child. However because of his attachment to his mother's corrupted soul and her memories, particularly her knowledge of what is called "The Elixir of Life and Death" Jakob's presence on the island and the Lake remains after his immolation. The island once called Paradise becomes the ground on which a hotel is built, and Jakob who is now also known as Mister Owl is the owner and proprietor a century later. Rusty Lake: Hotel There is a week long instance, in 1893, where particular guests stay at the hotel : Mr. Deer, Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Boar, Mrs. Pheasant and Mrs. Pigeon. Mister Owl says they have their reasons for staying and that he has his own reasons for allowing this. Each night one of them is murdered by Harvey, the player, and their flesh used for exquisitely made meals for the other guests. Each of them is a different species of animal person, and the game simply calls their lifeless remains as the meat. All of this is in the interest of the Lake, which Mister Owl regards as an important entity in its own right, and so he makes decisions in the lake's behalf, like a moral patient. Rusty Lake: Roots One of the employees of the hotel, has a history of their own involving the elixir of life. Just outside of the Lake but still within viewing distance of the hotel is the home of two alchemists who believe they have created such elixir. While both of the brothers ingest it, one of them dies immediately while the other transforms into a crow person and serves under Mister Owl at the hotel. This surviving alchemist called Mister Crow works with the corrupted soul of his brother William Vanderboom to raise a family with his nephew. There are three generations of members of this family tree, and each of them makes a tremendous sacrifice in order for William to be born again and live. This reincarnation is a young woman called Laura. The Cube Escape series Laura is a depressed woman that won a trip to the Rusty Lake Mental Health and Fishing facility in 1969. She goes there with her pet parrot Harvey, the same Harvey as in the hotel, and discovers a fishing cabin. She gets attacked by a corrupted soul, but is saved by Harvey that chases it with fireflies. She goes back to her home and kills herself, driven mad by her depression and the corruption that got to her after the attack in 1971. Dale Vandermeer is a detective that was called to take care of Laura's death, the case 23. He has a tragic past when David Eilander, that somehow survived 2 deaths and 165 years, killed his whole family during his 9th birthday. He arrests Robert 'Bob' Hill, Laura's ex boyfriend, that kills himself after all the stress and harassment this false accusation lead to. After finding some clues, Dale goes to Rusty Lake, in the chapel. At the same time, Mr. Crow extracts Laura's corpse's memories to feed them to the Lake. This wakes up the corruption in Laura's soul and she kills Mr. Crow's new wife and threatens to kill Harvey. Mr. Crow calms her down and goes to meet Dale in the chapel. He leads him to the cabin in which Dale finds an elevator that goes to the bottom of the Lake. After his descent, Mr. Owl helps him wonder safely at the bottom of the Lake. Mr. Crow uses the dog that got immortal thanks to James trying to make his own elixir, to extract the elixir for himself, and helps Mr. Owl trapped in his scubba diving suit, grabs a white, black and blue cube, then attaches Dale and Laura to a machine in a big cube at the bottom of the Lake. This creates the golden cube. During his time in the machine, Dale is trapped in a repeating loop of the same memory, modified by Mr. Owl and Mr. Crow to make him go through therapy, helping him understand how he really is. He is then sent in another elevator, leading to the Hotel. During his ascent, the Lake helps him to sort out his memories, helping him fight the killer of his family and be at peace with him being the cause of Bob's suicide. Tristan Webb and R.E.D.™ The Lake in real life The Lake is obviously not a real place on earth. No matter how hard you look, you'll never find Mr. Crow roaming around in the forests. Though, there are many hints about where the Lake could actually be situated. There are two main theories about where the Lake could be. In the Netherlands, or somewhere near in Europe : * The names of the characters all are mixes of dutch and german names. Vanderboom, meaning "from the tree", Vandermeer, meaning "from the see", and Eilander, meaning "islanders". Knowing the developers of the games are from the Netherlands, it's logical they went with those sorts of names. * The Lady of the Lake is a painting found in Laura Vanderboom's house, representing Caroline Eilander, and was painted by Lacus Fleo. This is not a real painter, but his name is a reference to Lake Flevo, a lake that now disappeared, situated in the Netherlands. * Van Gogh is a kind of omnipresent character. When you don't directly play as him (Cube Escape: Arles), his paintings or representations of him as ears being cut off are in almost every game. Knowing he was a Dutch painter, it makes sense. * The levels and ambiance of the series are really remmenassent of Magritte's paintings, to the point where some games are literally based on his paintings (Cube Escape: Harvey's Box is directly based on Les Valeurs personnelles). Magritte is a surrealist French painter, and his paintings are like fever dreams, just what the developers needed as inspiration. A precise lake in Canada : * In Rusty Lake: Roots, in the level The war hero, Leonard prepares himself to go to WW1. His outfits are the same as Americans and Canadians soldiers. * There are many "Rusty Lake" in Canada and North USA, one of which, Rusty Lake, Leafs Rapids, Manitoba, have a cost that really closely match the official maps that were given to us in the various games. * There are many newspapers in the Rusty Lake series, all of which are the Daily Herald. There are many Daily Heralds, but all of them are situated in North America, and some in Canada, namely the Prince Albert Daily Herald, situated in Saskatchewan, but with influences on Manitoba and Ontario. * There are private detectives in Manitoba, and regulations that force them to have police intervention and supervision for some things, such as keeping an arrested man in your own office to interrogate him. That is exactly what happens with Dale when he interrogates Robert 'Bob' Hill, helped by a policeman. * The police cars you can see out the window of Laura's house in the first level of Cube Escape: Case 23 are a model we see everywhere in the USA, and only around Manitoba, in Canada. * Leaf Rapids is a small town that was created recently in months because of a gold mine, that quickly closed, leaving behind it caves (Cube Escape: The Cave) and a ghost town. * Leaf Rapids has a similar architecture as what we see during Cube Escape: Birthday : typical houses spaced in an even, yet chaotic way, with random black rooftops. You can even find Dale's house, if you consider every location informations we know about it from looking out the windows. * This one is surely more of a coincidence, but it's quite cool and interesting. In Cube Escape: Birthday, Dale drew a picture of the houses, with blue walls. But, when Mr. Rabbit dies, the tree he's under is the same one in front of Laura's house, and her house is white. So is it just a child's imagination ? Maybe not. Leafs Rapids houses were painted with a special paint, that is white but is supposed to turn blue with pollution. Except, since they're in the middle of nowhere, to this day, the houses always stayed white. The Netherlands theory just ignores the evidences of the Canada theory, but for the Canada theory, those Netherlands connections are just here because of the origins of the developers, since it's easier to talk about what you know. Sadly, the Rusty Lake developers officially rejected any placement theory, saying the Lake isn't based on any place in real life. Yet those evidences are really far from coincidences. It's your choice to believe whoever you want. R.E.D.™ Family connections There are 3 families in Rusty Lake : the Vanderboom, the Vandermeer and the Eilander. But what if they were all one big family that split up in time ? We will have to prove 2 connections : first that the Vandeboom and Vandermeer are the same family, and then that the Eilanders are connected to the Vander- family. The easiest, and yet longer to prove is the existence of the Vander- family. First of all, we know form the introduction of Rusty Lake: Roots that James is William's nephew, and his only heir. We only know one sibling of William, and it's Aldous. Witch means Aldous is James's father. But in that case, it doesn't make sense. Why would James inherit the house and not Aldous, since he is still alive ? The thing is, Aldous faked his death, to keep the elixir of life a secret for himself. With Aldous thought dead, and no other heir, James inherits the house and on goes the story of the Vanderboom. But Aldous wasn't made to live alone. He remarried with another woman and had a daughter that married a Vandermeer, and gave birth to Dale. This is why Dale's grandpa looks so much like Aldous. This very information is the key to another theory. Also, this means that Dale is James's nephew and Laura's cousin. Connecting the Eilander to the Vander- family is trickier, but not impossible. First, we know that Laura has a painting of Caroline Eilander in her house. Also, Caroline worked on the elixir, just like the alchemists brothers, and they knew Mr. Owl before they found it. So there is two possible solution for this : * Either the Eilander are Aldous's and William's ancestors and they got everything from inheritance. * Either Mr. Owl gave them his mother's painting and researches and Laura inherited the painting from them. R.E.D.™ The cubes Memory cubes The memory cubes are one of the most iconic symbol of Rusty Lake. They are the essence of a person's soul, since your soul is composed of your memories. The way those memories are decomposed isn't clearly explained, but it's more likely that it's based around a precise event, and everything around it that the owner of the memory fells like is attached to it. For exemple, Dale's 9th birthday memory is based on the murder of his family, but the party that went on before that is, for him, directly connected to the event. The cube's colour depend on the type of memory that is stored inside. A good memory will be a white cube, and a bad one, a black cube. Special cubes There are two other type of cubes that we know of. The blue cubes have the power to send its user in the past, and thus, is the representation of either the past itself, or time travel. The golden cube is unique. He was created from a blue cube from Dale, and a black and a white cube from Laura, that has a bit of the elixir in her blood. The golden cube represents the future, but we don't know what he will be used for yet. It's more than probable it'll be explained in the Cube Escape that will come after Paradox. The symbolism of the golden cube is Past (or time travel) + memories, both good and bad + immortality = future. The guests and Caroline The guests's cubes are what is left of them after Harvey killed them one by one. Those memories are corrupted by a sense of revenge, which is why they are black. The same thing applies to Caroline's memories, they got corrupted because of her feeling of revenge and uselessness while trying to save her child. Dale Unless what most can think, there are not 2 memories of Dale that we know, but in fact 3. The first one is obviously Birthday. The core memory is his family getting murdered by David Eilander, that he saw as a real "Mr. Rabbit" since he was a kid. But the Hand, that is the physical incarnation of the Lake, gave him a way to change his past, at least from his perspective, since the change never really happened. Yet, the Lake didn't have much control, since it din't have time to get inside the memory, and could only give Dale a push. The second one is Theatre. The core memory is seing Robert 'Bob' Hill kill himself at the bar. The Lake had more time to get inside his mind, Dale himself saying he feels like he's changing, and took the liberty to put on its own show. The third one is Paradox. The core memory is Dale getting to therapy. The Lake got pretty much full control over this memory and made what it wanted about it. The proofs that it is indeed a memory are the following : * The secret ending of chapter 2, where Dale gets out using the elevator, with Mr. Bat waiting for him, and taking the golden cube with him. * The fact that he is at the bottom of the Lake, because of the elevator and the forest, and yet he can get to the beach, with the Hotel in the distance, by just going straight. * The room itself that heavily looks like a psychiatrist office, with the little table, the long sofa, the chairs looking at each other... * Mr. Crow giving him a Rorschach test and the machine helping him to sort out his past emotions. * The globe that is a symbolism of Dale "traveling in life", telling his life to the therapist. * Dale balancing the essences of his past lives. * The different minds that have to be put in front of a mirror, to "reflect" on his past, present and future. * The present mind that gets him to therapy, proving it was happening at the present. * The past mind that gets him to his most traumatic memory. * The future mind that is a place calm, empty, and still terrifying, like the future of someone that doesn't know what to expect. * Dale having to face all of his feelings : emptiness (dead Dale), corruption (corrupt Dale), sadness and suicidal needs (hanged Dale), and his anger and murderous needs (murder/deer Dale). * Dale embracing all of them as a part of him, by becoming his corrupted self. * Dale letting go of the case that is killing him because of all the effort he makes, by killing Laura. Laura Laura's memories are quite a mess, as we can see in Cube Escape: Seasons. We have to put them on two places on the timeline, one where they are real events, and one where it's Laura going inside her memories to kill her corruption. The first one is obvious, just put them where we're told to. Except not, because there is no way Winter exists in 1981. The best thing we can guess is that Winter is a vision the Lake gave her, to permit her to be at peace with her past and her corruption. Corruption that started when Aldous extracted her bad memories from her corpse, and totally took over, pushing her to kill everything around her, and she finally made peace when Aldous talked to her. R.E.D.™ Latest activity Photos and videos are a great way to add visuals to your wiki. Add one below! Category:Browse